Marketing Excellence Benchmarking

Marketing Excellence Benchmarking

The Challenge

A benchmarking exercise with major pharmaceutical companies on marketing excellence programmes.

The Analysis

The major global pharma companies were questioned about their marketing excellence programmes, structure and local versus global decision making.

The Result

Most pharma companies have marketing excellence programmes, although their structure and complexity varies considerably. The ‘business unit model’ gives good local integration between sales and marketing, but little opportunity for marketers to advance their careers within marketing and few senior, experienced marketers within the organisation.

There are some fundamental requirements for a successful marketing excellence programme:

It must be supported by a marketing excellence culture, where the customer is truly king, across all functions

The programme must be supported in word and deed from the top of the organisation

It should encompass culture, planning, people and training across all the functions, not just marketing

It should involve career development and training

It must recognise that not all healthcare systems and customers are the same and therefore should be very flexible.